Carlotta Petrina

Carlotta K. Petrina (September 6, 1901 – December 11, 1997) was an American illustrator and printer, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933 for her illustrations to accompany John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Early life and education

Charlotte F. Kennedy was born in Kingston, New York, the daughter of Gilbert F. Kennedy (a lawyer) and Helen McCormick Kennedy (an illustrator). She was educated at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union in the 1920s.[1]

Career

Petrina won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1933 (postponed until 1934) to do lithography in Paris.[2] Her "beautiful but heartbreaking" illustrations for John Milton's Paradise Lost were published in 1936. The artist used herself as a model for Eve, and her late husband as the model for Adam, lending a particular intimacy and poignancy to the images.[3][4][5] Milton scholar Virginia Tufte made a biographical film about Petrina, titled Reaching for Paradise: The Life and Art of Carlotta Petrina (1994).[6]

Petrina also illustrated editions of Norman Douglas's South Wind (1932),[7] Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2,[8] and the John Dryden translation of Virgil's Aeneid (1944),[9] She made some illustrations for an edition of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, but they were not used in the final publication.[10] Drawings by Carlotta Petrina were included in the second Whitney Biennial in 1933.[11] Among her quirkier projects, she illustrated a short humorous novel called Clovis by Michael Fessier (1948), about a parrot with human intelligence.[12]

Personal life and legacy

Charlotte Kennedy changed her name to Carlotta when she married fellow artist John Petrina in 1921. John was born Giovanni Antonio Secondo Petrina in Treviso, Italy. They had a son, Antonio. John died in 1935, in a car accident, while the Petrinas were traveling in Wyoming.[13] Carlotta Petrina died in 1997, age 96, in Brownsville, Texas.

The Carlotta Petrina Museum and Cultural Center in Brownsville exhibits her works and other artifacts from her life, as well as hosting classes and performances.[14][15]

References
  1. "2 Brooklyn Fellowship Winners Will Pursue Facts and Fancies" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (March 28, 1933): 15. via Newspapers.com
  2. Carlotta Petrina, Guggenheim Foundation fellows index.
  3. Wendy Furman-Adams and Virginia James Tufte, "Ecofeminist Eve: Artists Reading Milton's Heroine" in Jennifer Munroe and Rebecca Laroche, eds., Ecofeminist Approaches to Early Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan 2011): 68-73. ISBN 9781137001900
  4. Lloyd Dickson, "Against the Wiles of the Devil: Carlotta Petrina's Christocentric Illustrations of Paradise Lost" Milton Studies 25(1989): 161-195.
  5. Wendy Furman and Virginia James Tufte, "'Metaphysical Tears': Carlotta Petrina's Re-Presentation of Paradise Lost Book IX" Milton Studies 36(1998): 86-108.
  6. Virginia James Tufte, University of Southern California, Emeriti Center.
  7. South Wind (New York 1939).
  8. Herbert Farjeon, ed.,Henry the Sixth: Parts I, II, and III (Limited Editions Press 1940).
  9. The Aeneid (Limited Editions Club 1944).
  10. George Macy Companies, Inc. Limited Editions Club and the Heritage Press: A Preliminary Inventory of its Art Collection at the Harry Ransom Center University of Texas at Austin.
  11. Helen Appleton Read, "American Art Comprehensively Represented in Whitney Museum's Second Biennial" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (December 10, 1933): 14B-C. via Newspapers.com
  12. Michael Fessier, Clovis (New York: Dial Press 1948).
  13. "John A. Petrina, Noted Illustrator, Fatally Hurt in Auto Mishap" Kingston Daily Freeman (June 17, 1935): 1. via Newspapers.com
  14. Steve Clark, "Center Provides Alternatives in Poor Neighborhood" Brownsville Herald (December 7, 2013).
  15. J. Noel Espinoza, "Petrina Museum Due Tribute" Brownsville Herald (March 27, 2000).
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